IslamOnline.net: "It Is Permissible for Us to Fight and Kill All Israeli Jews"

IslamOnline.net is one of the most popular Islamic websites on the internet. It is owned by the esteemed Shaykh Yousuf al-Qaradawi, who appears on the al-Jazeera show Shari'ah and Life. This website has English and Arabic sites, but they do not mirror each other. The Arabic content is completely independent of the English content and the Arabic content appears to be more openly intolerant and violent. The following is from the Q&A section of the website, where Muslims ask whether certain things are permissible in Islam, and eminent Islamic shaykhs answer them with their legal opinions (fatwas).

Here a Palestinian Muslim asks whether it is permissible to conduct suicide bombings against Jews. Several shaykhs respond, all in the affirmative, demonstrating why it is not only permissible but an Islamic duty to fight against and kill all Jews living in Israel. Worthy of note is Shaykh Mulawi's explanation of why Muslims should not kill Jews outside of Israel. He reasoned that this could be bad for Muslims, as it might bring adverse reactions from the Jews' host countries.

Question: Is it permissible to kill civilians in Israel through martyrdom operations which are carried out by Palestinians in defense of their land?

Answer:

Praise Allah, and peace be upon the Prophet of Allah.

The esteemed Shaykh, counselor Faysal Mulawi, Vice President of the European Council of Research and Issuing Fatwas:

There is no established war between us as Muslims and all Jews, just for their sake of being Jews. The established war is confined to only between us as Muslims and the Jews living inside the occupied territory (i.e. Israel), to which they came from every corner of the earth to take control of it unjustly and with hostility. They evicted its previous inhabitants and started the war against us in order to fulfill their unjust imperialistic design.

Wherefore, it is our undisputed right to combat those who attack us. But if there is a Jewish man living in any other country of the world who has not answered the Zionist call to emigrate to occupied Palestine and does not enjoy Israeli citizenship, we are not required to kill him or combat him. This is especially so since this could lead to breaking the agreements between us and the country in which the man lives and enjoys citizenship. These agreements are sponsored by the United Nations and permit Muslims to travel to every nation of the world to fulfill the duty to proclaim da’wa (Muslim missionary call), or to engage in trade, or to study, or for any other reason. Breaking such agreements in order to kill a non-Israeli Jewish man would lead to substantial damage to Islam and Muslims.

But the Jews living inside the occupied territory and those who carry Israeli citizenship are all participants in the aggression against us, and it is our right to combat all of them. However, current global norms confine the fighting to military personnel and not civilians.

When Israel commits to this (i.e. to refrain from combating civilians), it will be our duty to commit to it as well in order to save old people, children, and women from the killing. But currently Israel has not committed to this, and continues, time and time again, to attack children, women, old people, and civilians. We have witnessed this in recent incidents where the Jews opened fire on unarmed youth and children in cold blood, directly killing them by shooting them in the head or upper parts of the body. We had seen it before in what occurred in the city of Qana in Lebanon, where hundreds took refuge in the United Nations building so as not to be killed, only to find that Israel did not hesitate to bomb that building and kill more than a hundred children, old people, and women.

Before this reality we say that reciprocity is legitimate, for Allah says: “And if ye do catch them out, catch them out no worse than they catch you out” (Qur’an 16.126). Thus it follows that it is permissible for us to fight against and kill all Israeli Jews. Until the Zionists refrain from killing our civilian children, women, and old people, we may respond in kind.

Dr. Nazar ‘Abd-al-Qadir Ryan, associate professor of modern science at the University of Gaza, said:

We know the Jews well; their men are soldiers, their women are soldiers, and their children are trained from infancy toward militancy and hatred of Arabs, Muslims, and Muhammad (PBUH), and they consider every Muslim a Muhammad (PBUH).

It is known that the Prophet (PBUH) forbade the killing of women, and said when he saw a woman slain: “This was not to be killed.” […]

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…the Prophet (PBUH) was killed by a Jewish woman from the Bani Qurayzah (a Jewish tribe from Medina). Since she was killed by a Muslim man, it became a rule that it was permissible to kill all the killers among the Jewish women in our country of Palestine, without hesitation.

Dr. Jalal Yousuf al-Sharqi, a scholar from Al-Azhar, said:

Every Jew in Palestine, whether man or woman, young or old, military or civilian... All of them are considered combatants and rapists of the land of Islam… [...]